DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2004 HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEFENSE JERRY LEWIS, California, Chairman C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, JR., Washington ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Young, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Obey, as Ranking KEVIN M. ROPER, ALICIA JONES, GREGORY J. WALTERS, DOUG GREGORY, PAUL W. JUOLA, Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense- Testimony of Members of Congress and Other Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations 339 92-853 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 2004 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS RALPH REGULA, Ohio C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida, Chairman JERRY LEWIS, California JIM KOLBE, Arizona JAMES T. WALSH, New York CHARLES H. TAYLOR, North Carolina DAVID L. HOBSON, Ohio ERNEST J. ISTOOK, JR., Oklahoma HENRY BONILLA, Texas JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, JR., Washington RANDY "DUKE" CUNNINGHAM, California TODD TIAHRT, Kansas ZACH WAMP, Tennessee TOM LATHAM, Iowa ANNE M. NORTHUP, Kentucky JOHN E. PETERSON, Pennsylvania JOHN E. SWEENEY, New York JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina CHET EDWARDS, Texas ROBERT E. "BUD" CRAMER, JR., Alabama PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island JAMES E. CLYBURN, South Carolina MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California JESSE L. JACKSON, JR., Illinois CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey JAMES W. DYER, Clerk and Staff Director DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2004 THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2003. FISCAL YEAR 2003 SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WITNESSES HON. DONALD H. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE GENERAL RICHARD B. MYERS, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE DOV ZAKHEIM, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (COMPTROLLER) INTRODUCTION Mr. LEWIS. The Committee will come to order. Today it is my pleasure to welcome the Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and General Richard B. Myers, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thank you very much for taking the time to be with us. Dr. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Dov S. Zakheim, Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller, are also back again. We had a great session yesterday by the way, Mr. Secretary. I have a rather detailed and wonderfully prosed introductory speech that I am going to pass on. In the meantime, by way of introduction nonetheless, let me say that we hear every day from our constituents across the country about the American people's pride as they view and share both the frustration, the pain, and the concern of our great young men and women doing the job that they are doing for us and for freedom in the Middle East. And they are going above and beyond that which anyone could really expect, but they are themselves individually, as well as collectively, in the business of eliminating from the face of the Earth an administration, a scourge on governmental processes like the world has seldom seen. There is little doubt that the effort to free the people of Iraq is going very well. We have a problem, Mr. Secretary, that I do not know exactly how to deal with, and that is that we have now an explosion of talk show hosts around, who spend most of the day having to say something almost every minute of the day, and so small things are repeated dozen of times as though it was brandnew news. It is part of our modern world and we must deal with that. Between now and then, there is little doubt that the American people support the Commander in Chief's effort, and they admire (1) the work that is being done by the commanders, chiefs, those people who are in front of us. It is a privilege to have you here. I understand there are some limitations on General Myers's time. The Secretary has to leave no later than 3 o'clock. We have to get out of this room, by the way, at about 10 minutes after 3, for there is another Committee meeting after this one in this same room. In the meantime, gentlemen, your entire statements will be included in the record. I will give you my speech if you would like to read it. But between now and then, welcome and please proceed, Mr. Secretary. Secretary RUMSFELD. Thank you very much. Mr. LEWIS. Maybe you ought to let me yield to Jack Murtha. He really was apologizing because he was late, but in the meantime that had to do with votes. REMARKS OF MR. MURTHA Mr. MURTHA. I just want to say what a good job your Comptroller did. We have never had such frank, open testimony from a Comptroller. Comptrollers are usually this, that, and the other. But this guy did a masterful job. He is as good as I have ever heard, and I just wanted to compliment him before the Secretary, so that you would know he is representing you well. SUMMARY STATEMENT OF SECRETARY RUMSFELD Secretary RUMSFELD. I would like to say I taught him everything he knows. The problem is it is just the reverse. Thank you, I appreciate that. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I will make a brief statement. General Myers has a brief statement, and at that point Dick Myers and I have to leave while Dr. Wolfowitz and Dov Zakheim take over. STATUS OF THE WAR IN IRAQ We appreciate this opportunity to discuss the President's emergency supplemental. We are now less than a week into Operation Iraqi Freedom. The major ground war began last Thursday at 10 p.m. at night, and the major air war started on Friday, the following day, one week ago at 1 p.m. So while the conflict is well begun, it is only begun, and we are certainly still closer to the beginning than we are to the end. Already, coalition forces have made good progress, and certainly the men and women in uniform, U.S. and coalition alike, are doing a superb job. They face an adversary that has demonstrated its contempt for the laws of war, dressing its forces as liberated civilians, sending them out waving white flags, feigning surrender in order to draw coalition forces into ambushes and then shooting them. They are using hospitals as a base from which to launch attacks and they are hiding behind human shields. Coalition forces have raced across more than 200 miles of Iraqi territory, coming from the south towards Baghdad, through enemy fire and inhospitable terrain, with difficult weather as you have read, some winds gusting up to 60, 70 miles an hour, to reach a point about 50 miles south of Baghdad in less than a week. It is an impressive rate of advance. They have successfully secured the Iraq southern oil fields, prevented an environmental disaster in the destruction of the critical resources that the Iraqi people will certainly need once this regime has been removed. Given the fact that the Republican Guard have moved towards Baghdad from the north coming south, from the South going north, from the west moving toward the east, the campaign could well grow more dangerous in the coming days and weeks as the forces close in on Baghdad, as coalition forces close in on Baghdad. But the outcome is assured: The regime will be removed. The only thing that remains unclear is precisely how long it will take. FISCAL YEAR 2003 SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST We do know that these efforts cost money and the cost of the operation and the other missions currently underway in the global war on terror can no longer be absorbed without an emergency supplemental appropriation that the President has requested. Since the new fiscal year began, every month since October of 2002-we've been through October, November, December, January, February, and most of March-we have had to borrow from other programs to pay for the costs of the war. The pattern cannot continue much longer. The services have already gone through their discretionary spending for the first, second, and, for the most part, third quarters of 2003, and they will soon have exhausted the fourth quarter of discretionary funding. If this continues we will run out of discretionary funds by late spring or early summer is their estimate, which could force us to curtail training, maintenance, and other activities. The President submitted a supplemental of $74.7 billion dollars of which $62.6 billion is for the Department of Defense: The request for DoD includes, among other things, $7.1 billion for the round-trip cost of transporting our forces and equipment from their permanent bases to the theater of operation; $13.1 billion to provide warfighters in theater with fuel, supplies, repairs, parts, maintenance and other operational support; $15.6 billion for incremental personnel costs such as special pay and compensation for mobilized reserves; $7.2 billion to start reconstituting the forces by replacing the many cruise missiles and smart weapons and other key munitions that are being expended; $12 billion for stability operations, military operations to root out terrorist networks and deal with any remaining pockets of resistance, humanitarian assistance, and operations to search for and destroy weapons of mass destruction. We have teams of people that are prepared to go in, following the forces, to search out suspect sites as soon as the ground is occupied; $1.5 billion for coalition support in the global war on terror, including $1.3 billion for reimbursement to Pakistan and other key cooperating countries assisting in that effort, and $165 million for training of the Afghanistan National Army; and $6.1 billion for other requirements outlined in the request to support military operations in Iraq and the global war on terror. |